· The Nucleus boots up and I can connect to it in the Roon app without issue, but I have a question about configuration/storage/attached devices
Describe the issue
I’m experiencing an issue with Live Radio on my Roon Nucleus. Stations like ABC Jazz (and several others) stop playing very frequently—usually a few times every hour.
Interestingly, when I stream music via Tidal, everything works perfectly without any dropouts or stability issues. The problem seems to be isolated strictly to Live Radio streams.
Has anyone else encountered this, or does anyone have suggestions on how to fix these radio drops?
Thanks for reaching Roon support - we’ve had a look at your diagnostic data and can see what’s happening.
The issue is on the streaming server side, not your Nucleus. ABC Jazz in Roon streams through a third-party CDN (StreamGuys) via an ICY/Shoutcast connection. The logs show the stream starts successfully every time, but the StreamGuys server is terminating the connection after a variable period — sometimes after a few minutes, sometimes after an hour. When that happens Roon logs a server-side end-of-stream and stops playback, rather than auto-reconnecting.
This is different from Tidal, which uses HTTPS with proper session tokens and reconnects transparently in the background.
One thing worth trying on your end: change the DNS server on your router (or set it directly on the Nucleus if your router allows per-device DNS) to a public resolver such as 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) or 8.8.8.8 (Google).
Here’s a step-by-step on how to change the DNS settings on your Nucleus:
Open a web browser on a device connected to the same network as your Nucleus.
Enter the IP address of your Nucleus in the address bar.
If you don’t know the IP address:
Open the Roon app.
Go to Settings > Setup > Find Nucleus.
Note the IP address shown for the Nucleus.
Alternatively, use http://nucleus.local/ (on macOS or Windows with Bonjour installed).
Log into the Web Interface:
Once the web page loads, you’ll see the Nucleus web administration interface.
Change the DNS Settings:
Scroll down to the Networking section.
If the Nucleus is using DHCP:
Note that you cannot directly edit DNS settings under DHCP. You will need to switch to a static IP to specify custom DNS servers.
Switch to a Static IP:
Click on the Configure or Edit option under networking.
Enter the current network settings for your Nucleus (IP address, subnet mask, gateway) manually. These can often be found in your router’s settings or your current DHCP lease information.
Specify Custom DNS Servers:
Add DNS servers in the relevant fields. Common choices:
Google DNS: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
Cloudflare DNS: 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1
OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
Save and Apply Changes:
Click Save or Apply to confirm your new settings.
Restart the Nucleus (make sure Roon Server is stopped) and let me know if you continue to experience stoppages when streaming
The reason is that abc.streamguys1.com is a CDN hostname — different DNS resolvers can route you to different CDN edge nodes, and some nodes may have more aggressive session limits than others. A different DNS may land you on a node that holds connections longer.
In the meantime, we’ve started monitoring the ABC Jazz stream from our end to see if we can reproduce the same server-side drop.
Could you let us know after trying the DNS change whether the drop frequency improves?
Thanks for your message and support.
I have set up the Nucleus as you suggested and also added Google DNS to my switch. I left the switch on DHCP.
ABC Jazz is working more stably now—it only dropped twice in the last two hours, but I will keep monitoring it. I’m also listening to FM1 Blues Radio, and it is working fine.
Is it possible to configure Roon to automatically reconnect to ABC Jazz after a crash or drop?
Glad to hear the improvement, and please keep monitoring it. We had a fairly recent Roon release that included improvements for short drops, but there is no way to manually configure a longer timeout at this time.
Please let us know how further testing goes, and whether you notice any patterns around when the dropouts occur.
We have not heard back from you, so we will go ahead and close this thread due to inactivity. If you need further assistance, please submit a reopen support request via the technical support help form link and specify that the issue be reopened. Thank you.
